Sonic Robo Blast 2 Server Hosting

What does a dedicated SRB2 server do that in-game hosting can't?

A dedicated SRB2 server runs the netgame with no player sitting behind it, so the match survives when whoever started it logs off. Normally someone picks Host Game, plays over their own home connection and takes the whole lobby down the moment they close the window. Launched with -dedicated, SRB2 opens no game window at all: the host becomes a terminal that logs events and accepts console commands, and everyone, you included, joins as an ordinary client.

One netgame holds up to 32 players, and the gametype decides what they do together. Co-op and Competition run through the single-player stages as a group, Race turns them into a sprint, Match and Team Match hand out ring weapons, Tag and Hide & Seek put a target on one player's back, and Capture the Flag is where most public servers live. Casual servers push further with hangout maps, role-play and Lua gametypes written by the community on the SRB2 Message Board. Whichever you choose, a host that never sleeps is what lets a regular crowd grow around your server.

How much RAM does a Sonic Robo Blast 2 server need?

Very little. A 32-player SRB2 netgame, addons included, uses a small slice of the 4 GB on our Bronze plan, which makes Bronze the right answer for almost every community. SRB2 descends from the Doom Legacy engine and still keeps a light footprint on the server side.

What actually works the server is the simulation loop. The game advances 35 tics per second, and every Lua hook an addon registers runs inside those tics. A heavy custom gametype packed with objects and per-tic scripts leans on a single core, so the Ryzen 9 9950X clock speed matters far more here than memory.

The one resource that grows with your ambitions is disk. Character packs, level packs and music WADs pile up fast if you keep everything you ever rotated, and every file joiners should receive has to live on the server. Even so, Bronze storage is plenty for a well-curated addon folder. Plans up to Diamond keep the same four vCores, so they will not make SRB2 run faster; skip them unless you are storing an unusually large library.

How do you load PK3, WAD and Lua addons on an SRB2 server?

Upload the files over SFTP or through the panel file manager, then load them from adedserv.cfg with one addfile line per file, extension included, such as addfile mycharacter.pk3. SRB2 also takes files on the command line through -file, but keeping the list in the cfg lets you reorder or drop an addon without touching startup settings. Order matters: libraries and base packs go before the addons that depend on them.

Adding anything other than a music-and-sound WAD marks the game as modified. That is expected, but it affects where you advertise: the Standard room is meant for the official gametypes, while Casual and Custom Gametypes exist for everything else.

Players missing a file download it from your server, and two console variables decide whether that works. downloading has to stay on, and maxsend caps the size of any single file a joiner may fetch. Its default of 4096 KB is too small for many modern character and level packs, and players without the file get refused. Raise it (the ceiling is 204800 KB), but remember that large transfers cause visible lag for people already playing, so a pinned download link in Discord is kinder for huge packs.

Managing admin rights, passwords and ban lists

On a dedicated server the panel console is the host, and a few powers belong to the host alone. Setting the admin password is one: type password followed by a secret in the console, or put that line in adedserv.cfg, and trusted players run login with the same secret from their own game. The other route is promote, which elevates a player by node number; demote takes it back.

Admins can kick and ban with an optional reason the player sees on the way out. Bans land in ban.txt, alongside IP bans made with banip. The list holds 100 entries, and once it is full the ban command only kicks, so prune it with clearbans or edit the file and run reloadbans.

A few more switches are worth knowing. allowjoin, which only the host can flip, shuts the door during a tournament round, pausepermission decides whether anyone besides the server may pause, and showjoinaddress prints each joiner's IP to your console. Set a motd so newcomers see your rules and Discord link in chat as soon as they arrive, and double-check that the admin password is not visible when you share console screenshots.

Why do players lag or get resynced, and how do you fix it?

Most SRB2 netgame complaints come down to three causes: one player on a poor connection, a big file transfer, or a desync. Because SRB2 keeps every client's game state in step with the server, a single bad line can make the game feel sticky for everyone else. The ping command lists each player's latency, and maxping kicks anyone above the threshold you set.

Joins cause short hitches too, since the server sends the current game state to each newcomer. jointimeout controls how long that transfer may take before the player is refused, and the allowance grows with the size of the state. When a client drifts out of sync, the server pauses and tries to resynchronise it, giving up after resynchattempts tries, 10 by default.

Repeated resyncs usually point at a buggy Lua addon rather than the network. Try new scripts with blamecfail enabled before a busy evening, and the console will name whoever desynced. Reloading the map clears many strange states after a messy mid-round join, while nettimeout sets how long a silent player is kept before being dropped.